2017 Centennial Lecture Series
After 100 years of opening the doors of opportunity for residents of the Paso del Norte region and serving as a model for educational innovation and cultural exchange, The University of Texas at El Paso begins our second 100 years as a recognized leader in redefining higher education for a 21st century student demographic. The University’s Centennial Lecture Series invites noteworthy speakers to the UTEP campus to share their perspectives on a broad range of contemporary issues that are likely to impact our society, culture, and lives in the years ahead. We invite you to join us in exploring important and timely topics and expanding our thinking about how they may help shape UTEP’s next 100 years.


President Diana Natalicio
and
Richard Castro, Owner Operator, Castro Enterprises

cordially invite you to attend a UTEP Centennial Lecture
“Ray and Joan: The Man Who Made the McDonald’s Fortune and
the Woman Who Gave It All Away”
Lisa Napoli
Author

4 p.m. Thursday, April 13, 2017
Undergraduate Learning Center, Room 106, UTEP Campus

Reception to follow presentation


Photo of Lisa Napoli

Born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, Lisa Napoli moved to southern California in 2004 to work on the public radio show, Marketplace. She was inspired to write this book when she learned of a sculpture of a nuclear mushroom that had been anonymously funded by the heiress to the McDonald’s fortune. Over the next five years, scouring archives, sleuthing out sources all over the country, and traveling to meet them, she unearthed and pieced together the story of this amazing woman. To tell Joan Kroc’s story, it seemed essential to tell that of Ray and how he made the McDonald’s fortune, too.

Lisa’s first book, Radio Shangri-La (Crown, 2011) chronicles the dawn of democratic rule in the mysterious Himalayan Kingdom of Bhutan, where she was invited to help start a youth-oriented radio station.

A journalist for over thirty years, she was among the pioneering team of journalists at the New York Times who covered the early days of the dot-com era. A graduate of Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts, Lisa leads a group of friends in an award-winning volunteer cooking group at the Downtown Women’s Center on Skid Row in Los Angeles.